Erstwhile

//ˈɝst.waɪl// adj, adv

adj, adv ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Former, previous. India, literary, not-comparable

    "“Scarcely had Alice reached her twentieth birthday, than she gave her erstwhile fiancée^([sic]) his formal congé.[…]”"

  2. 2
    Respected, honourable. not-comparable, proscribed

    "If you're for one of my erstwhile opponents, that's O.K. Just don't work too hard."

Adjective
  1. 1
    belonging to some prior time wordnet
Adverb
  1. 1
    Formerly; in the past. formal, literary, not-comparable
Adverb
  1. 1
    at a previous time wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
pastalreadyancientantecedentanteriorat one time

Example

More examples

"Tom watched in horror as the erstwhile contents of his grocery bags cascaded down the flight of stairs."

Etymology

From erst (“first, formerly”) + while.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.